Florida, Day 3

Sunday, February 2

Groundhog Day had not a cloud in the sky. We saw three dolphins swimming close to the shore. That was exciting because dolphin sightings have been rare this year.

Jan made blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Afterward, Jane and I went down to the beach in front of the condo. Getting to the beach required walking through the water in the lagoon. Hoo-wee, that was cold! “It’s from the rain,” Jane said.

The underwater path to the beach

Jane put her chair by the shell tree. There are two shell trees, one on either side of a bunch of shrubs. If the shell trees have a purpose, I don’t know what it is.

Shell tree, forefront; condo building, background

I walked down the beach. I cannot get my directions straight. I think it is from living in Illinois for so long. If I’m looking at a body of water, it feels like I am looking east, which down here I am totally not. I am looking west. Therefore, when I turned left to walk on the beach I am going south, not north. So weird.

The water in the ocean was warmer than in the lagoon. I was surprised at first, but realized that the shallow lagoon will change temperature much quicker than the larger Gulf of Mexico. Duh.

I saw an ibis foraging in the surf.

Ibis in the surf

There were a few sea oats growing along the dune. When I was in Florida decades ago, the sea oats were protected because of overuse for decorated purposes. They have beautiful seed heads.

Sea grass, art shot

Sea grass, detail

I walked as far as where the lagoon narrowed. There is a bridge down there somewhere, but I didn’t get that far.

This was as far as I got down the beach

I walked back to where Jane was sitting. We admired the shadows around the driftwood buried in the sands.

Driftwood and shadows

There was a tricolor heron in the lagoon. The identifying mark is a white breast. Most of the pictures I took were out of focus. I am at an age where I don’t see well enough through my bifocals to focus the camera manually, but autofocus will often focus on the wrong thing when the surrounding area is “busy” with, e.g., branches.

Tricolor heron

I got several good pictures of a little blue heron. I didn’t even know there was such a thing.

Little blue heron

Little blue heron fishing

I even got an action shot.

Little blue heron flying

We didn’t have lunch because breakfast had been late and substantial. Jane and I drove down to Bowditch Point Nature Preserve to look for gopher tortoises. We didn’t see any. We saw several burrows that looked as if the sand had been recently excavated.

An apparently active burrow, but no one seemed to be home

There was an interesting plant with bright orange fruits.

Orange fruits on the ground

I split one of the fruits open with difficulty. It was almost like taffy inside. I licked a little of the juice off my fingers, hoping it wasn’t poisonous. Other than being sweet, I can’t describe the flavor.

The interior was the consistency of taffy

On further inspection, we saw that the fruit was produced in a cone. The appearance of the whole fruit reminded me of hot lava poking through cooled basalt on the top.

The cone with the fruit poking through

“It might be a cycad,” I conjectured. “They have cone-like fruits. It’s an ancient plant.”

Further along the path, I saw a plant that had much smaller cones. Perhaps a male.

There were several nice banyan trees. They have not only aerial prop roots that go down to the ground but roots all over the surface of the soil extending for long distances around the trunk.

A banyan tree with aerial prop roots and spreading root on the ground

Back at the condo, Jane began researching the orange fruited plants. It was a cycad! I win! It is wild sago (Zamia pumila) or coontie, the latter name derived from the Seminole Indian name, conti hateka. And it is dioecious, which means a plant will be male or female, but not both. I win again!

Sunday evening we went over to Jan's friend, Sheila's for the superbowl. We ate numerous hors d'oeuvres and had Rueben sandwiches and key lime pie for supper. The Chiefs won, which I expected because I'd watched them make a surprising comeback during the playoffs. It was a good game.